Private colleges, universities report borrower default rate of 8.2%

At United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, 41.4 percent of borrowers who started repaying student loans in 2014 defaulted on those loans by the end of 2016, according to a Higher Education Tribune analysis of the latest disclosure from the U.S. Department of Education.

The analysis uses data that tracks borrowers at privately controlled colleges and universities receiving federal student aid. The 2014 cohort accounts for borrowers who entered repayment on selected federal loans in the given fiscal year and defaulted before the end of the second fiscal year.

Altogether, nearly 1,500 public institutions had 1.4 million borrowers in repayment in the 2014 cohort. And 114,405 of them were in default – a default rate of 8.22 percent, which is below the national rate of about 11.5 percent.